


mark of the beast

by raregoose



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: (it depends on your interpretation), Biblical References, M/M, Magical Realism, Mark's life is a Mess, Pining, kind of like a 5+1 but really like a negative 6 plus 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 13:49:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17101778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raregoose/pseuds/raregoose
Summary: Mark is on a mission from God: go to the NHL and make it his own. Go and conquer.He has a lot to lose before he can gain anything.





	mark of the beast

**Author's Note:**

> this is kind of... weird. i'll be the first to say it. this is biblical hockey rpf, which really is kind of strange on a lot of different levels.
> 
> So, Mark has been associated with the number seven ever since he was drafted 7th overall in 2011. Since I read the Book of Revelation, I've been really drawn to the imagery of the opening of the seven seals, and so this is sort of a strange amalgamation of a lot of biblical references, mark/blake moments, and some vague magic stuff which can be read literally or metaphorically, depending on your interpretation. You don't really need to be familiar with the Bible, the Book of Revelation, or the Seven Seals to read this, but a tiny bit of background might change your experience with it (whether that's positive or negative is a decision for the reader; you should take what want to take from this, not what you feel like you Should take, u feel me?)
> 
> You might be interested in [this wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_seals) about the seven seals, [this article about mark](https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/jets-star-mark-scheifele-nhls-biggest-hockey-fan/) that discusses his time on the colts with aaron, his religion, and his choice not to swear, [this video](http://raregoose.tumblr.com/post/174728593398/dangerouslyaddictivethings-sportsnet-mark) of mark calling blake his boy and his winger, and [this video of mark getting drafted](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4S1H-SrM7QU), wherein mark's pure joyful energy at being drafted is infectious.

“there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour”

Revelation 8:1

_first_

Mark loses his life when he is eighteen. 

It only takes seven picks before the life is squeezed out of him by a nondescript sweater emblazoned with the NHL logo. His chest burns where it rests against him, the placeholder before Winnipeg reveals their real logo. Winnipeg takes his life for itself, and Mark gives himself willingly. His heartbeat increases in speed until it stops completely. The team is still being born into the world, and Mark is coming with them, reborn as a Jet, a new life for a new team. The fans who have made the trek to Minnesota from Manitoba scream ever louder when he pulls on the jersey and the hat, and Mark can feel his life leak out from himself into them, strengthening them.

He’ll die a thousand times and a thousand more for those fans, for the logo on his chest, for the chance he’s been given. And Mark was raised Christian, and he’s a proper God-fearing boy, so he looks up to the heavens and sends a silent _thank you_ up to whoever’s up there as he stands on stage getting his photo taken. 

They send him back to Barrie to conquer, to destroy juniors and take everything. They’re the horsemen and they bring the chaos; sounds of thunder precede them. Mark Scheifele is going to be the best player in the NHL and he’s going to be sure that everyone knows it. That’s what he’s giving his life for.

_second_

They send Mark down again. It’s an embarrassment, a shame on the number seven that gets placed neatly in parentheses next to his name in the forums that call him a bust.

So Mark loses his distractions; he kills them, bearing his hockey stick like a sword and destroying anything that isn’t ice or rubber. He spends all his free hours out on his billets’ outdoor rink with guys from the team, playing until their legs give out.

He’s close with Aaron especially, but he doesn’t think about the upset gurgle in his stomach whenever he gets a new girlfriend or the way sometimes a smile from Aaron will make his legs feel like jelly even when they haven’t been skating for hours. Aaron teases him for his single-mindedness and the way he says ‘frick’ and Mark feels dizzy but he pushes it down and out. He spits out the distractions like he’s a knight at war spitting out blood. He hacks them out like they’re something blackened and alive in his lung and he crushes them underneath the toe of his boot. To think that something like that could live within him, poisoning him. He’ll be much purer without them.

There’s a beast inside him and it wants glory. It wanted Aaron on his lips with the beard he somehow could already grow. It wanted to be underneath him, dark eyes looking down into his pale ones, but he destroys the desires that don’t align with the glory he’s waiting for. 

The guys already tease him for not swearing; he doesn’t need to give anyone any more reasons to see him as an outsider. He certainly doesn’t need any stories or harassment material following him to where he’s headed next.

_third_

Mark makes the team. Mark plays center on the second line. The Jets lose, and lose, and lose some more, and the older guys wear years of losing heavy on their shoulders. Some of them seem to be broken by it, spirits shattered by the years of fruitlessness.

Blake is all different. Blake is unlike anyone. The more he carries, the stronger he becomes. He slaps Mark on the shoulder after a game and says, “good job, kid”, and something starts to fill up Mark’s lungs. 

Mark overflows. He loses his love. It spills out of him, his eyes, his ears, his mouth. One night during a game he takes a particularly hard hit and it spills out of his nose with his blood all over the ice. Mark runs his hands in it, tries to collect it, but it’s all slick and melting into the ice and he can’t get it back. Mark gives his love to the ice, the game, the winger who in turn also gives his whole self for the team.

Six years separate them and it feels like longer at this point in Mark’s life. He’s young and he spends his free time at the mall, crying to Jacob about his hopeless crush, the inescapable hunger for Blake. Blake, who spends his time being a single father, filing his taxes on time and doing all the adult things Mark has fallen backwards into.

“I’m sure if you just,” Jacob waves a hand. He’s holding three watches that he probably shouldn’t be able to afford. The diamonds catch the light. “Like, offer to suck his dick, he’ll say yes. He’s a single father and a professional hockey player. I’m pretty sure he’s not seeing much action.” Jacob laughs at that. Jacob’s in an ‘off’ stretch with his on-and-off college girlfriend, so he’s taking girls home left and right, flashing his well-set white teeth and whichever expensive watch he’s wearing that night until he’s got his pick of the blondes at the bar.

“No, it’s not even about that,” Mark says. It’s not about his sex drive. Mark already killed his distractions. He is set on only thinking about one thing.

But, God, Mark is hungry. He catches his reflection in the glass of the storefront and his cheeks are gaunt and hollow.

Blake invites him to dinner. His son is excitable and adorable, smile glued to his face. They eat chicken and drink wine but when Mark puts his glass down, it’s more full than it was when he brought it to his lips. Love spills out of him; his lips and wine are red.

They eat their fill but Mark is starving. 

“So how are you liking Winnipeg so far?” Blake asks.

“It’s great, great,” Mark replies.

“Not too cold?” Blake smiles around the question.

“No, it’s perfect,” Mark says, completely honest. Winnipeg _is_ perfect, far from prying eyes and overinvested media. 

“Good, I’m glad to hear it.” Blake is gracious, kindly getting to know the new rookie. He passes Mark the wine, asking something about Mark’s family.

Mark tops off his wine and knocks it back, trying to swallow it all at once. He chokes back his love, tries to swallow it like a pill with the wine, but it comes back, leaking out of him ceaselessly. 

Mark excuses himself to the bathroom and cries out his love into the sink. He stains the porcelain red. After dinner, Blake hugs him goodbye and Mark leaves red fingerprints on the back on his button down. 

The sun is going down in Winnipeg as Mark drives home; the sky and the tire tracks he leaves are red.

_fourth_

Mark dies again, at the end of his second season. They claw their way into the playoffs only to be swept by Anaheim.

The final game is on home ice. Mark is surrounded by white, the fans he promised his life too. They salute them and exit the ice for the final time. It’s all over far too soon. There’s a beast living inside Mark and it’s gonna eat him whole; it’s gonna devour him until there’s just bones and _want_ left, the only things that ever really mattered to Mark anyway.

He sits in his stall, puts his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands, and cries until there’s nothing left inside him. He loses his sadness; he cries it out, flooding the locker room, filling the skates he hasn’t bothered to take off yet.

There are feet in front of his. Mark can’t pry his face out of his hands to look up and see who it is. He wallows in the sadness, feels in pool in his palms, hot and wet against his cheeks, against the scratchy beard he can barely grow.

“Scheif.”

Blake’s voice.

The beast is hungry. It wants Blake and it wants to win but all there is now is death. And ending. The world is ending around Mark and he’s gonna drown.

“Scheif, stand up.” Blake, again. Mark loosens his hands and looks up through wet eyelashes. Blake’s cheeks are wet. Mark understands it as his own sadness, lost and shared and given away. Mark likes to think he’d be known as a giver.

Mark stands. Blake takes him into a hug, squeezing him tight, squeezing the rest of the sadness out of him until he’s wrung dry. Mark is a giver and Blake is a taker. Mark wants nothing more than to be taken by Blake, in all senses of the word.

“This is a beginning, not an ending,” Blake says. His hands are twisted in Mark’s jersey, gripping it with his full strength.

Mark dies, and he is born again. 

_fifth_

They’re good. They’re _finally_ good. They’re finally frickin’ phenomenal, and Mark is rewarded by being ridden into the boards and having his collarbone snapped. It feels like something is cracked open when it happens, like someone breaking the seal on a soda can or ripping an envelope open.

As he kicks his legs against the ice in agony and yells from the fear and the surprise, Mark loses his pain. It fizzes out like gas out of a soda can, like a geyser. His vision goes in and out, and when he blinks up at the ceiling, Blake is there, bent over him with his eyes dark, whispering something comforting to him that Mark can’t process because pain is bursting out of him high speed.

Mark always knew he’d die for his team, that he’d die on the ice with the fans above him, but not like this. Not _now_ , not in December with the season in his hands.

He clutches his arm to his chest as he skates off, feeling like it’d fall off if he let go, like it would come free from his body and the rest of his pain would flow out like he was a uncorked bottle. The doctor says he probably doesn’t need surgery, but he also can’t meet Mark’s eye when he asks in desperation how long he’ll be out.

Blake finds him crying with his arm in a sling after the game, hiding in the hallway, unable to face his team.

“Scheif,” Blake says, the way he always does, his voice deep and even and caramel smooth.

Mark sniffles like a child. He can’t meet Blake’s gaze.

“Look at me.” Blake’s voice is not angry, not hard. Mark goes soft along all of his edges for him. He looks up, and Blake is looking down to him, gentle, like he’s afraid of breaking him.

“It’s not fair,” Mark finally says. He stands, and leans into Blake. “I can’t be the martyr. Not now. Not yet.”

Blake sighs and pulls Mark into a hug. Mark clutches him with his left arm, but it’s not close enough. Blake is never close enough.

“We’ll do it for you,” Blake says. He digs his fingers into Marks back, holding him close, holding him like he’s afraid he’ll float away, holding him like he needs Mark just as much as Mark needs him.

Blake is his _boy_ and his _winger_. Blake, more than anyone, will do anything for the team. Mark learned from the best.

When Mark walks back into the locker room, eyes downcast, every one of his teammates is icing his shoulder. Mark’s pain is lost. He’s given it away. Mark’s always been a giver.

The boys acknowledge him with fist bumps and well-wishes. Mark doesn’t want their sympathy; all he wants is his arm to not be in this sling. He wants to give away his martyrdom. He wants the ice, his stick, his winger by his side.

He watches his winger take his spot at center. He watches his winger give everything to the ice and the team. High above him, Mark falls more in love every game.

Slowly, his shoulder heals.

_sixth_

Playoffs awakens the beast. It smells blood. Mark looses it, unleashing its full fury on the ice. He wields his stick like a sword, and he cuts down anyone in his path.

Mark looses his beast, and loses his control. 

“You’re a _beast_ , man!” Kyle yells in his ear, because they’re in Minnesota and they’re in Nashville and they’re winning and winning and Mark is pushing as hard as he can.

Who is like the beast? Who can wage war against it?

It splits open Mark’s chest and devours everything in its path. It’s something in the whiteout, something in the throngs of people that scream for them, for victory. The beast feeds off the energy and it only grows stronger.

The ice is their battlefield and Mark is the knight. On his steed, on the beast, Mark seeks out the glory he’s waited seven years for. He’s fighting for himself and for the men alongside him, especially his winger, the man by his side at all times.

Blake is _his_ boy and _his_ winger.

Anyone who dares to touch him is going to hear from Mark.

He sees red when a Nashville player sends Blake spinning to the ice. Mark doesn’t fight with his fists, he fights with his stick, but he loses his control and grabs the player, trying to drag him down. The refs get between them, but Mark only comes back to earth when a hand reaching out of a blue sleeve grabs his arm.

“Scheif! Don’t do something fucking idiotic!” Blake is seething, angry from the hit and angry at Mark for taking a stupid penalty.

“He can’t frickin’ do that to you!” Mark spits, but Blake just holds his arm until he calms down, and he’s escorted to the box, breathing heavy and baring his teeth to the Nashville players that dare look his way.

They lose that game, but they win game seven. When the clock finally ticks down to zero, it feels like the cosmos have shifted. It feels like the stars are falling around them, crashing to earth. _Nashville_ , they beat _Nashville_. Their white whale, the team whose back they’d been chasing up the standings all year. 

“Wheels is my boy and he’s my winger,” Mark tells the media. He’s not sure where exactly he lost his control; did he spit it out onto the ice in Minnesota? Did he leave it at home before their first flight to Nashville? Did he give it away? Mark’s always been a giver.

Blake is his boy and he doesn’t care who knows. Control is overrated, anyway.

Now all they can do is wait for Vegas. Mark sits in his stall with his face in his hands and prays, if you can call it praying. He’s not sure what he’s praying to or for. But he knows that something changed with the Nashville series, and that the stars aren’t in place anymore; it’s like they’ve shifted in the sky, like they’re barely holding onto the fabric of space. And Mark was raised Christian, so he does what he knows how to do.

Blake takes Mark’s wrists and peels his hands away from his face. Mark looks up to him; they’re both disheveled and scruffy after a month of playoffs. Blake’s eyes are hard and bright.

“Scheif. Two more,” Blake says. He squeezes Mark’s wrists. Mark feels his fingers on his pulse points; his heart pounds. He knows Blake can feel it; he knows Blake knows how Mark feels. Mark lost his control, and he was never good at keeping secrets in the first place.

But before they can worry about it, they have a cup to win.

_seventh_

They lose in five pitiful games to Vegas. The city is quiet. Mark can’t take the silence, the disappointment heavy and wordless in the room.

It feels wrong, the quiet everywhere, faces turned away from Mark, when Mark’s brain is still screaming, loud as ever. The beast is angry. It’s furious when Mark packs his gear and goes home to shave. Its work isn’t finished.

Mark can’t leave Winnipeg, not yet. He works out his aggression, running long loops around the city, feeling every footfall against the pavement, pushing his anger and disappointment and shame out of his feet. He wakes up every day and clenches his fists around the few moments before he remembers that it’s over.

It’s ending, it’s all ending. 

Blake’s still in town, hanging around until the school year ends. Mark gets tired of waiting around alone, and finally stops staring at his phone. He calls Blake in the morning after a run and invites him over like it’s the most casual thing in the world. If he runs enough, maybe he can forget Blake’s smile and his intense eyes. Maybe he can outrun the years of hurt, pain, and love. Maybe if he runs far enough, out of this city, the people will forget how he disappointed them, how they ran into a wall called Vegas and the beast wasn’t enough.

“It still hurts, doesn’t it?” Blake asks when he shows up. They sit on Mark’s couch. Mark’s TV is unplugged; Andrew forbade him from watching the final, knowing it would hurt Mark either way.

“Yeah.” Mark’s voice is empty. He looks out the window; Winnipeg’s morning summer sun is illuminating everything in yellow.

“Me too,” Blake says. Carefully, like he’s put a lot of thought into the motion, Blake reaches down and puts his hand by Mark’s. They overlap, just barely, Blake’s pinky on Mark’s.

“So many years to get there, and then it ends just like that.” Mark’s chin drops, and he shakes his head.

“Hey.” Blake is suddenly closer, grabbing the hand that was underneath his own. “What did I tell you about endings?”

Mark doesn’t meet Blake’s eye.

“Mark. What about the endings?” Blake pushes, grabbing Mark’s knee with his other hand. He’s in Mark’s space, and Mark hates it. He hates that he can’t lose these feelings, this pull to Blake. He hates that Blake’s mouth is inches away and all Mark can think about is kissing it.

“They’re beginnings,” Mark manages to say. He’s suffocated by Blake’s presence. His brain is too loud, screaming a million different things at Mark. The beast roars.

“This was your beginning. It’s up from here.” Mark meets Blake’s eyes, finally. They’re on the precipice of something. Mark’s not sure what, but he feels it in the knee Blake is holding, and the collarbone he broke less than a year ago.

They say when a bone breaks, it reheals stronger. Mark wonders if the same is true of a hockey team, if they’ll mend stronger than they broke.

“You were a revelation out there,” Blake breathes. “It felt like waking up.”

Mark doesn’t understand this; his brain says a million things at once. It’s muddled, too loud.

But Blake kisses him and suddenly everything is quiet.

There is silence for a time. They just kiss and hold each other like the world is ending.

Blake pulls away. “Next year,” he says. “Let’s end the fucking world together.”

Mark nods. He hears trumpets, maybe.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! you can find me on tumblr and twitter @ raregoose! come talk to me about hockey :)


End file.
